Condi: Global growth is the way forward

Erika JohnsenPosted at 3:31 pm on November 13, 2012

Because it’s a bit of a slow-ish day and because the importance of encouraging robust economic growth in the face of our current global crises cannot be understated, here’s former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with a solo (click on the image to watch via RCP). She gets it, emphasis mine:

Because always in international politics, when you have these upheavals, there is a country that steps forward to have a view of how human history is going to unfold, and for that last almost seventy years, that country has been the United States of America. … The president has a big to-do list. First and foremost, of course, it’s to get the U.S. economy in shape again, to deal with the debt crisis. We all know the story, we all know the fiscal cliff, we all know that America can’t lead if indeed, our own fiscal and economic house is not in order. Indeed, everybody across the world knows that if a country loses control of its fiscal destiny, it loses control of its destiny. … But the thing that Europe needs most right now, and in fact the United States needs most right now, is global growth. If you could put on the agenda of the president of the United States a plan for global growth, so that this shrinking pie doesn’t exacerbate all of the political tensions out there, Europe would be helped, Japan would be helped, the United States would be helped. And it starts with reinvigorating the trade agenda.

As President Obama leads, or at least puts on a show of leading, the upcoming fiscal-cliff negotiations, we’re going to keep hearing an emphasis about “fairness” — but fairness does nothing to bring about economic prosperity, which is the truest, most efficient, most penetrating way to materially help the greatest number of people — on a global as well as a micro scale. The Republicans have the policy right: Measures that encourage economic growth are what’s going to bring in more revenue and make more people wealthier and more self-sufficient, while the Democrats proposals will just keep us piddling along in the economic shallows.